ABSTRACT
Paying attention to the women in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein opens a space for demonstrating a productive relationship between queer theory and lesbian-feminist critical approaches. Despite the theoretical tensions that mark this encounter, I contend that the insistence upon creating radically different, disruptive and perverse readings, which is characteristic of both fields of enquiry, can pave the way towards a newly constructive alliance. A queer and lesbian reading makes it possible to foreground the significance of relations between women in a text which initially appears to be dominated by powerful male desires. There is also scope to twist existing feminist perspectives in exciting new directions and show how queer critical practices work to unravel the heteronormative interpretative paradigms that so often silently govern acceptable ways of reading. 1 Offering close readings of the relationships between Victor Frankenstein's mother, Caroline, his adopted sister and sweetheart, Elizabeth Lavenza, and the family servant, Justine Moritz, my approach works with a series of perceptual shifts. Reading the novel from off-centre lesbian and queer angles, I explore moments at which it is possible to perceive a slippage between friendship, female identification and ambiguous but dynamic same-sex desires.
